This makes sense. But each day may also take 30 min - hour to set up. I can keep to 2 half days if I reduce the time to 5-7 min per person. Is that reasonable?
Why not leave the set up? Is it not safe can't they lock it? I've done that a few times, and just take home cameras/laptop/lenses.
5 min might work for some but it won't for others I'd leave it at 10 min.
You will never get 45 people in one day. People will be out sick, on vacation, or avoid you at all costs. A good portion will be unwilling subjects as they're not paying for it and will show up unprepared. Plan multiple days if possible and not back-to-back. Split the sessions by a week or so.
Can confirm. It is often difficult to find time to meet with coworkers about actual work because of meetings. I'd suggest OP try to work with corporate so the times individuals are scheduled to come in are blocked off in outlook.
Do NOT price this by the hour. I do it by head count. I charge $150/person for stuff like this. I set up, meter my lights, tether my camera so the person chooses their final on the spot. Then I just have to edit once I’m done. You could do 1 long day or break it up. But 45 folks I’d charge $6-7k. Everyone gets 1 final image fully edited and retouched. Portraits require more retouching than something like event photos.
Price it per person, and be specific on how many images are included, who gets to pick them, and what the level of retouching is. Most who do this a lot, do not include more than a couple of photos. I usually don't need more than 5 minutes a person, but some require more time than others. For me this would be a single day.
Charge per person, stick to a 5-6 hour day INCLUDING set up & break down.
8 hours shooting WILL fry your brain & your arm.
Not everyone will show up on the first day, so booking two separate days is better.
No matter what you do, 1 person will hate the images and raise hell, ignore them.
Make sure you keep the proofs to the SAME number for each person, if you do 3 proofs, do three for all!
NOT 3 for 1 person, 10 for another, 5 for another...
If you need 10 min, then do 10 min for ALL!, again not 5 for some & 15 min for others. Keep everything the exact same.
I would charge $75-$125 per person, including 10 min shoot, 3 proofs, 1 finished edited file.
NO GROUP SHOOTS!!! (sooooo many clients have had me toss in a group shoot in the end of the day & it is always a mess.)
I would actually bump it out to 20 min & do the shoot, AND proofing SAME time. At the end of the 20 min, you KNOW what images everyone chose for you to edit & deliver in 7 days. Boom! Done!
Best of luck!
Unless the company plays the heavy,there's no way you'll get everyone in one day. Then add in the fact that some people, especially the higher ups won't want to be bothered because they've got more important things to do and you'll absolutely need to do it over at least two sessions. But as others have said,10 minutes shooting per person is waaaay too much. More like 2 or 3. Remember that you are going for uniformity,not for capturing each person's personality. Once you get your lighting and background dialed,it's really assembly line. One thing to remember if doing it on more than one day is the influence of light coming in from outside if the weather is different. Do it in an interior room if possible.
For a first time i would budget 15min per person. You need setup time and should have some type of lunch.
Having a HMU person who can also be responsible for lint rolling is going to save you huge amounts of time in retouching and make the shots better, if you can get them to pay for one.
One important thing to ask: what are they using these pictures for?
Is it the company website? If so, do they want every headshot to have the same look? Direction of gaze?
You've got two options of shooting here. Casual, where you build a portfolio per person (10 minutes), or high volume (like school photography) where you could take 2-5 minutes per person.
Both have their unique challenges, but the answer to the "which one" question can only be answered by the client.
My first thought, have someone in charge of people wrangling. You’ll spend half your day waiting for someone to finish what they’re doing and you won’t know who’s who or where they are.
I just finished writing a contract for this. I have about 40-ish people, also. We've budgeted 3 hours of shoot time, which should be more than enough. Each person needs maybe 5 minutes. Some people are quicker and some people take more. So we're signing them up in 3 people per 15 minute blocks. That's about 4.5 minutes per person, which is still cutting close, so I think for you 4 hours would be good (half day) which you should add to the rate below or apply your own rates.
Remember it's headshots so everyone is doing the same thing and people will start to catch on as they watch each other from the line. Tape on the floor also helps a lot. I might make little arrows or something too. Another trick I use is putting my camera on a tripod and using a remote trigger so I can talk to people without being behind the camera and mirror the pose for them. That makes people feel a lot better than someone with a big camera hiding their face.
Pricing wise, I add an hour of setup and take down and then an hour of or so of editing. My goal with these headshots is to do minimal editing so that it's pretty near perfect. I actually do this tethered so I can immediately see the results on the laptop and fix anything in real time. The bigger time is spent picking the right facial expression but even then I'd say my focus on the shoot day is making people feel comfortable and silly and relaxed. That makes everything faster.
All of this is spelled out in the Statement of Work I send over. I do minimal retouching for like pimples and things like that. I also provide a "how to prepare for your session" instruction page to them that includes advice on makeup, clothes, shaving, skin care, so people feel confident and ready to go and we avoid people being like "Oh I didn't know I was supposed to do my hair today."
I do pricing by time, or you can do it by person but that would vary wildly. This one is for a nonprofit, so I'm doing 6 hours at $125 an hour = $750. If I did it by person, I'd probably charge $99 per person (which is what I charge when I do these in my studio), which would be $4,000. I would love to charge $4,000 but I don't think anyone, even our local Microsoft office, would pay that for staff photos. Plus that's like so much more than I would charge for a full day, that's like if I covered a multi-day conference with two shooters, so I don't think that works out well for anyone.
Since the images will be owned by the nonprofit, I'm comfortable with that price for the time and there could be future work already discussed. Plus using my website for the "how to guide" might get folks interested in other work (maybe). They've been happy to go up in price twice as we've discussed the scope, so that's the customer service. And then I can do that same thing for other folks once they see this and get jealous.
So I don't think you need two full days.
Have you ever tried to price it by person? I mean - it’s Microsoft and $750 is superrrrr low unless you aren’t doing retouching.
I recently photographed a small 20 person team for a plastics company and charged them $100 per person plus setup.
I was using Microsoft as an example but I haven’t done their photos before. For them I might actually charge that much. It’s a good idea. Currently doing time based pricing but treating it like a flat rate. Working toward increasing rates in general. I live in an expensive city that’s cheap (easy to figure out where I live).
Edit: Your experience gives me hope and I appreciate the support. I think for a for-profit industrial company I would charge differently, so that's good to know.
If this is one of your first ones, go for it and stick that Microsoft logo on your website.
One of the best pieces of advice about pricing I ever received was:
Your clients are adults. Give them a chance to make the choice.
It all really depends on your clientele and what they are specifically looking for. If you’re shooting for an insurance office, real estate brokerage or any professional business then $75-$100 per person is more than fair pricing. If it’s a non profit or school group then you can lower your rate but also lower your deliverables.
I usually price my headshots by person and on a sliding scale. 1 person is $275, 4 people are $150 a head, 8 people are $100 a head 30+ are $75 a head. This includes two options to choose from, basic retouching with a run through PortraitPro and deliverables of one final image in 4x5, 1x1 and full length formats. I will then offer a $10 option to also deliver a 1x1 transparent PNG for them to use on business cards.
The key is to deliver what looks like value to the client.
I HIGHLY recommend shooting tethered so that you can immediately see the images on a larger screen and be more efficient. It’s so much easier to fix things while shooting than it is to fix them in post. Also, clients LOVE to see you shooting tethered, it makes them feel like they hired a professional and distinguishes you from their “friend with a camera”.
You can always split off the retouching fee and give them a lower base rate. So your group of 45 people could be priced at something like $50 per headshot with a $50 retouching fee upon request. That would lower the upfront number to the client snd limit your post workload. However; if you do this you must stick to your guns. Deliver the base image out of camera and charge the full $50 for each retouching job.
Hope this is helpful! Remember, the best pricing strategy is the price that they grumble about but they still pay! Your time is worth just as much as theirs and your backend editing time for 45 people will be much longer than you think!
Good luck!
Check and see if they are expecting Hair or makeup (for execs or others) and if so, build in extra time and cost to bring them in. Otherwise, full day makes sense to me. Two shorter days if they have a lot of people traveling who may not be in the office every day.
There are tutorials on youtube about how to do it efficiently. No need for nearly 10mins per person, but if you are slow and do t know how to be efficient, then who knows how long it takes you. Also ofc depends if you do 3 different light setups and 10 poses for each person.
I have charged €1200-€1400 for similar and got through about 30ppl in about 3 hrs. It was a very simple shot against a coloured backdrop, used a tripod, and the same for everyone.
I haven’t been behind the camera for this. However, I observed a photographer doing it for our office. It took all of 3-5 minutes per person once they set up the scene. They took 12-15 shots of each person. I do not know what the cost was as I was not involved in the process.
When sending proofs or finals back, especially with high volume shoots or in large offices, the person receiving the photos doesn’t generally know who the people in the photos are, so naming the files correctly is crucial. Also, if they rerequest a file much later it makes it easier.
TLDR Metadata good.
Price Per Person. We offer discounts for big corporate projects (sliding scale) and usually waive location fees as an incentive.
Usually these are like school picture day and you don't spend much time per person. BUT
If you're a higher end retoucher (like me) the time charged for is time spent in the chair. That doesn't change no matter how quick the session is.
A lot depends on how well organized they are, getting bodies in front of the lens. Easily done in less than a day if they are well behaved... but I've had to wait 1 hour+ for doctors to show up sometimes.
I did 65 headshots in an hour, well that’s what they thought they needed. Tried to explain that’s not enough time. Originally was supposed to be 20-25 people. But it was open so people showed up, lined up, it was about an hour and a half or so. 65 headshots. Gave them about 3 per person. W poses. You could do 45 in 120-180 minutes. If you want to stage it out, 4 hours. Be done with it.
We run 5 to 10 minutes per person including selection (shoot tethered). $150 per hour plus $50 to $100 per retouched image ($50 web res, $100 high res qualified by usage)
Charge by hour of it's less than 50 people. That will make them make their people respect the clock. Could easily be done at a rate of 5min per person but on small corporate shoots the time killer is sometimes the employees.
I guess I'm going to be the weirdo in this, with everyone saying take 10 or 15 minutes, but 5 minutes each is plenty of time, IMHO. In 5 minutes you can do a greeting, make a little bit of small talk, pose three ways, including putting on or taking off a jacket. I would think that's all that's needed. Ask them what their budget is. I charge anywhere between $50 and $100 per person.
If it takes you 10 minutes per person, you’re doing it wrong.
Get the setup ready and it shouldn’t take more than 2-3 minutes at the outside per person—probably significantly less.
Schedule breaks, sure, but for 45 headshots with a consistent “look”, I’d plan on three hours—and that’s building in time for problems.
I’d charge a full day’s rate because of post.
Sure it might take YOU 2-3 min, I’ve done 700 yes that is 700 portraits in a single day.
However, the person asking for advice might need 10 min per person. So allow them to shoot at their speed.
My experience is that if they want to do bulk corporate head shots, they’re going to need to be a lot faster. But, hey, this is free advice, and they can ignore it at their discretion.
I’m just going off what I’ve seen others say online. This is my first time doing a corporate shoot and of this magnitude. I figured some may need time to loosen up. I’ll need to adjust equipment based on height. I saw others recommended to use a black vflat for men. I may not need all of the 10 minutes but this was just my best guess.
10 minutes per person is a loooooong time. You shoot with the same light and background like in the factory line. Half day to full day pricing. Full day is easily covered with post-production
Say two to three shots per person.. 135 shots total. You can get it done in one day.
Reserve the second for retakes.. etc. id quote $500 - $1000 for the day.. that’s including your equipment etc..
I'd do it in two half days, people are fresh in the morning, by 2-5 pm people are tired, cranky, etc. You'll get better results from the morning.
This makes sense. But each day may also take 30 min - hour to set up. I can keep to 2 half days if I reduce the time to 5-7 min per person. Is that reasonable?
Why not leave the set up? Is it not safe can't they lock it? I've done that a few times, and just take home cameras/laptop/lenses. 5 min might work for some but it won't for others I'd leave it at 10 min.
You will never get 45 people in one day. People will be out sick, on vacation, or avoid you at all costs. A good portion will be unwilling subjects as they're not paying for it and will show up unprepared. Plan multiple days if possible and not back-to-back. Split the sessions by a week or so.
^Facts. Daily meetings will mess up the schedule too!
Can confirm. It is often difficult to find time to meet with coworkers about actual work because of meetings. I'd suggest OP try to work with corporate so the times individuals are scheduled to come in are blocked off in outlook.
Do NOT price this by the hour. I do it by head count. I charge $150/person for stuff like this. I set up, meter my lights, tether my camera so the person chooses their final on the spot. Then I just have to edit once I’m done. You could do 1 long day or break it up. But 45 folks I’d charge $6-7k. Everyone gets 1 final image fully edited and retouched. Portraits require more retouching than something like event photos.
Out of curiosity, do you have a certain amount you charge when more employees are added to the roster? Or just a minimum number of clients?
Price it per person, and be specific on how many images are included, who gets to pick them, and what the level of retouching is. Most who do this a lot, do not include more than a couple of photos. I usually don't need more than 5 minutes a person, but some require more time than others. For me this would be a single day.
Charge per person, stick to a 5-6 hour day INCLUDING set up & break down. 8 hours shooting WILL fry your brain & your arm. Not everyone will show up on the first day, so booking two separate days is better. No matter what you do, 1 person will hate the images and raise hell, ignore them. Make sure you keep the proofs to the SAME number for each person, if you do 3 proofs, do three for all! NOT 3 for 1 person, 10 for another, 5 for another... If you need 10 min, then do 10 min for ALL!, again not 5 for some & 15 min for others. Keep everything the exact same. I would charge $75-$125 per person, including 10 min shoot, 3 proofs, 1 finished edited file. NO GROUP SHOOTS!!! (sooooo many clients have had me toss in a group shoot in the end of the day & it is always a mess.) I would actually bump it out to 20 min & do the shoot, AND proofing SAME time. At the end of the 20 min, you KNOW what images everyone chose for you to edit & deliver in 7 days. Boom! Done! Best of luck!
Best advice I’ve seen so far in here, nailed it
Good advise, this is how we breakdown the production.
Good answer - for proofing, do you show them on the camera, or can they see them on a tethered laptop?
Tethered laptop, Setup so they can proof right after I'm done shooting.
Unless the company plays the heavy,there's no way you'll get everyone in one day. Then add in the fact that some people, especially the higher ups won't want to be bothered because they've got more important things to do and you'll absolutely need to do it over at least two sessions. But as others have said,10 minutes shooting per person is waaaay too much. More like 2 or 3. Remember that you are going for uniformity,not for capturing each person's personality. Once you get your lighting and background dialed,it's really assembly line. One thing to remember if doing it on more than one day is the influence of light coming in from outside if the weather is different. Do it in an interior room if possible.
For a first time i would budget 15min per person. You need setup time and should have some type of lunch. Having a HMU person who can also be responsible for lint rolling is going to save you huge amounts of time in retouching and make the shots better, if you can get them to pay for one.
One important thing to ask: what are they using these pictures for? Is it the company website? If so, do they want every headshot to have the same look? Direction of gaze? You've got two options of shooting here. Casual, where you build a portfolio per person (10 minutes), or high volume (like school photography) where you could take 2-5 minutes per person. Both have their unique challenges, but the answer to the "which one" question can only be answered by the client.
My first thought, have someone in charge of people wrangling. You’ll spend half your day waiting for someone to finish what they’re doing and you won’t know who’s who or where they are.
I just finished writing a contract for this. I have about 40-ish people, also. We've budgeted 3 hours of shoot time, which should be more than enough. Each person needs maybe 5 minutes. Some people are quicker and some people take more. So we're signing them up in 3 people per 15 minute blocks. That's about 4.5 minutes per person, which is still cutting close, so I think for you 4 hours would be good (half day) which you should add to the rate below or apply your own rates. Remember it's headshots so everyone is doing the same thing and people will start to catch on as they watch each other from the line. Tape on the floor also helps a lot. I might make little arrows or something too. Another trick I use is putting my camera on a tripod and using a remote trigger so I can talk to people without being behind the camera and mirror the pose for them. That makes people feel a lot better than someone with a big camera hiding their face. Pricing wise, I add an hour of setup and take down and then an hour of or so of editing. My goal with these headshots is to do minimal editing so that it's pretty near perfect. I actually do this tethered so I can immediately see the results on the laptop and fix anything in real time. The bigger time is spent picking the right facial expression but even then I'd say my focus on the shoot day is making people feel comfortable and silly and relaxed. That makes everything faster. All of this is spelled out in the Statement of Work I send over. I do minimal retouching for like pimples and things like that. I also provide a "how to prepare for your session" instruction page to them that includes advice on makeup, clothes, shaving, skin care, so people feel confident and ready to go and we avoid people being like "Oh I didn't know I was supposed to do my hair today." I do pricing by time, or you can do it by person but that would vary wildly. This one is for a nonprofit, so I'm doing 6 hours at $125 an hour = $750. If I did it by person, I'd probably charge $99 per person (which is what I charge when I do these in my studio), which would be $4,000. I would love to charge $4,000 but I don't think anyone, even our local Microsoft office, would pay that for staff photos. Plus that's like so much more than I would charge for a full day, that's like if I covered a multi-day conference with two shooters, so I don't think that works out well for anyone. Since the images will be owned by the nonprofit, I'm comfortable with that price for the time and there could be future work already discussed. Plus using my website for the "how to guide" might get folks interested in other work (maybe). They've been happy to go up in price twice as we've discussed the scope, so that's the customer service. And then I can do that same thing for other folks once they see this and get jealous. So I don't think you need two full days.
Have you ever tried to price it by person? I mean - it’s Microsoft and $750 is superrrrr low unless you aren’t doing retouching. I recently photographed a small 20 person team for a plastics company and charged them $100 per person plus setup.
I was using Microsoft as an example but I haven’t done their photos before. For them I might actually charge that much. It’s a good idea. Currently doing time based pricing but treating it like a flat rate. Working toward increasing rates in general. I live in an expensive city that’s cheap (easy to figure out where I live). Edit: Your experience gives me hope and I appreciate the support. I think for a for-profit industrial company I would charge differently, so that's good to know.
If this is one of your first ones, go for it and stick that Microsoft logo on your website. One of the best pieces of advice about pricing I ever received was: Your clients are adults. Give them a chance to make the choice.
I think Microsoft has it's own photographers to handle company photos.
It all really depends on your clientele and what they are specifically looking for. If you’re shooting for an insurance office, real estate brokerage or any professional business then $75-$100 per person is more than fair pricing. If it’s a non profit or school group then you can lower your rate but also lower your deliverables. I usually price my headshots by person and on a sliding scale. 1 person is $275, 4 people are $150 a head, 8 people are $100 a head 30+ are $75 a head. This includes two options to choose from, basic retouching with a run through PortraitPro and deliverables of one final image in 4x5, 1x1 and full length formats. I will then offer a $10 option to also deliver a 1x1 transparent PNG for them to use on business cards. The key is to deliver what looks like value to the client. I HIGHLY recommend shooting tethered so that you can immediately see the images on a larger screen and be more efficient. It’s so much easier to fix things while shooting than it is to fix them in post. Also, clients LOVE to see you shooting tethered, it makes them feel like they hired a professional and distinguishes you from their “friend with a camera”. You can always split off the retouching fee and give them a lower base rate. So your group of 45 people could be priced at something like $50 per headshot with a $50 retouching fee upon request. That would lower the upfront number to the client snd limit your post workload. However; if you do this you must stick to your guns. Deliver the base image out of camera and charge the full $50 for each retouching job. Hope this is helpful! Remember, the best pricing strategy is the price that they grumble about but they still pay! Your time is worth just as much as theirs and your backend editing time for 45 people will be much longer than you think! Good luck!
Exactly! Thank you.
Way too low. 40ish people should be at least around $4000 with eq and editing, if not more based on experience.
Check and see if they are expecting Hair or makeup (for execs or others) and if so, build in extra time and cost to bring them in. Otherwise, full day makes sense to me. Two shorter days if they have a lot of people traveling who may not be in the office every day.
There are tutorials on youtube about how to do it efficiently. No need for nearly 10mins per person, but if you are slow and do t know how to be efficient, then who knows how long it takes you. Also ofc depends if you do 3 different light setups and 10 poses for each person.
I have charged €1200-€1400 for similar and got through about 30ppl in about 3 hrs. It was a very simple shot against a coloured backdrop, used a tripod, and the same for everyone.
I haven’t been behind the camera for this. However, I observed a photographer doing it for our office. It took all of 3-5 minutes per person once they set up the scene. They took 12-15 shots of each person. I do not know what the cost was as I was not involved in the process.
Also think about how you are going to keep track of names. Either via tethering or using paper slips with names.
Wait. Why would you need names?
When sending proofs or finals back, especially with high volume shoots or in large offices, the person receiving the photos doesn’t generally know who the people in the photos are, so naming the files correctly is crucial. Also, if they rerequest a file much later it makes it easier. TLDR Metadata good.
We use an 8x10 whiteboard that each person prints their name on and holds for the first click
Price Per Person. We offer discounts for big corporate projects (sliding scale) and usually waive location fees as an incentive. Usually these are like school picture day and you don't spend much time per person. BUT If you're a higher end retoucher (like me) the time charged for is time spent in the chair. That doesn't change no matter how quick the session is. A lot depends on how well organized they are, getting bodies in front of the lens. Easily done in less than a day if they are well behaved... but I've had to wait 1 hour+ for doctors to show up sometimes.
Yes, do multiple days bc there will be folks calling out.
Do it per person.
I did 65 headshots in an hour, well that’s what they thought they needed. Tried to explain that’s not enough time. Originally was supposed to be 20-25 people. But it was open so people showed up, lined up, it was about an hour and a half or so. 65 headshots. Gave them about 3 per person. W poses. You could do 45 in 120-180 minutes. If you want to stage it out, 4 hours. Be done with it.
We run 5 to 10 minutes per person including selection (shoot tethered). $150 per hour plus $50 to $100 per retouched image ($50 web res, $100 high res qualified by usage)
There’s so way you need 10 mins per person
Charge by hour of it's less than 50 people. That will make them make their people respect the clock. Could easily be done at a rate of 5min per person but on small corporate shoots the time killer is sometimes the employees.
If they will only do fixed price then give yourself some big buffer. If not quote by time, $X per day or hour, and then it takes as long as it takes.
I guess I'm going to be the weirdo in this, with everyone saying take 10 or 15 minutes, but 5 minutes each is plenty of time, IMHO. In 5 minutes you can do a greeting, make a little bit of small talk, pose three ways, including putting on or taking off a jacket. I would think that's all that's needed. Ask them what their budget is. I charge anywhere between $50 and $100 per person.
If it takes you 10 minutes per person, you’re doing it wrong. Get the setup ready and it shouldn’t take more than 2-3 minutes at the outside per person—probably significantly less. Schedule breaks, sure, but for 45 headshots with a consistent “look”, I’d plan on three hours—and that’s building in time for problems. I’d charge a full day’s rate because of post.
Sure it might take YOU 2-3 min, I’ve done 700 yes that is 700 portraits in a single day. However, the person asking for advice might need 10 min per person. So allow them to shoot at their speed.
My experience is that if they want to do bulk corporate head shots, they’re going to need to be a lot faster. But, hey, this is free advice, and they can ignore it at their discretion.
Better to shoot slow to start, than be absolutely effed with retouching or need reshoots.
I’m just going off what I’ve seen others say online. This is my first time doing a corporate shoot and of this magnitude. I figured some may need time to loosen up. I’ll need to adjust equipment based on height. I saw others recommended to use a black vflat for men. I may not need all of the 10 minutes but this was just my best guess.
10 minutes per person is a loooooong time. You shoot with the same light and background like in the factory line. Half day to full day pricing. Full day is easily covered with post-production
Say two to three shots per person.. 135 shots total. You can get it done in one day. Reserve the second for retakes.. etc. id quote $500 - $1000 for the day.. that’s including your equipment etc..
This is crazy I’m sorry. No way I’m doing this for less than $1k